Friday, February 22, 2013

Another round of feminist rape law reform in Norway

Criminalizing sexuality, and particularly male sexuality, is the most salient aspect of feminism, in my view. All the other feminist shenanigans pale in comparison because criminalization represents direct, institutionalized violence against men. Witnessing ever more hateful and draconian legislative attacks on sexuality is the primary reason behind my radicalization into an MRA. It has reached the point where even the mainstream media these days report the profound impact of feminist sex law reform. In 1999, sex with very drunk or unconscious women was defined in Norway as a relatively minor crime of sexual exploitation and punished by an average of 4 months in prison. Today the same phenomenon is called "rape" and the usual sentence is 4 years.

And that's just one example from a long list of legal reforms during the past 13 years which includes criminalizing negligent rape (abolishing mens rea), criminalizing johns (but not whores), the introduction of a grooming law and associated police stings, criminalizing bestiality, escalating mandatory sentencing, and so on. But despite these extreme advances in misandry, feminists are far from satisfied with the status quo. Now, for the fourth time since 2000, here we go again with another major round of feminist-driven sex law reform. Definitions and penalties for various sex crimes ranging from stalking to rape are set to escalate, in order to capture even more of male behavior and increase the prison population. Sex with anyone under 14 is now categorically to be defined as "rape," shamelessly instituting a deliberate lie in order to demonize men further. A brand new category of "abuse" of 16 to 17-year-olds will also be invented which effectively raises the age of consent to 18 if only the pigs find a pretext for claiming the girl was in a "vulnerable life situation" -- which can mean practically anything they want it to mean. The statute of limitations for sexual offenses against minors is proposed abolished, and retroactively so, so as to prosecute old men for alleged sex crimes many decades in the past. And bizarrely, they want to redefine masturbation to "intercourse" in order to apply the full force of rape law to men who persuade girls to perform sexual acts on themselves. The government has even managed to propose expanding the scope of child pornography law, which is already so absurdly broad that images of adult women who look young are covered, as are drawings and texts which sexualize "children" under 18. This is not enough for the feminists, so now even more ways to incriminate men for "child pornography" are set to be invented.

All the proposed laws can be found here, and now the NGOs and various interest groups will have their say (and notice they are pretty much all feminist groups -- notorious feminists like Ottar are on the list while MRAs are absent), before legislators decide on the final version.

Out of all this hate the highlight is, as usual, the definition of rape. The legal concept of rape has always been the most central concern of feminists, and now the law is officially intended to match the hate-propaganda promulgated by Amnesty International, the UN and other hate groups against men. The spiteful lobbying of these groups really does pay off, and the changes are happening astoundingly fast. Up until as late as 2000, rape law was still fairly sane in the Norwegian Penal Code. This is a facsimile of rape law (§192) before all the recent reforms:

"Den som ved vold eller ved å fremkalle frykt for noens liv eller helse tvinger noen til utuktig omgang..." -- This defines rape as sex coerced by violence or serious threats, which is a reasonable definition. Simple lack of consent does not make it rape and neither does a trivial threat. The woman needs to be made to fear for her life or health. This definition is also consistent with Common Law ("Carnal knowledge of a woman forcibly and against her will") and even with evolutionary psychology (“Human copulation resisted by the victim to the best of her ability unless such resistance would probably result in death or serious injury to her or others she commonly protects” is the definition used by Thornhill & Palmer in A Natural History of Rape). If you dilute the definition to include lower levels of sexual coercion (such as threatening to break up a relationship or start a rumor about a woman), then "rape" ceases to be a heinous crime and pretending we are dealing with the same phenomenon is dishonest.

Yet this is precisely what the feminists have done and, perversely, they have escalated the punishment extremely at the same time as expanding the definition to include trivial levels of sexual coercion. As of 2000 and onwards, any kind of threatening behavior will do, and so will unconsciousness on the part of the woman (which in practice usually means she had sex drunk and later regrets it).

And still, this is not enough. The most vaunted reform in the proposed changes is now to remove the requirement of force/threat entirely, and define rape in terms of simple lack of consent. In practice this means the woman is to be regarded the same way as the law currently treats unconscious women -- even if she is completely sober and feels no fear and is fully able to resist or flee at no risk, she shall not be bothered to do so, because holding women responsible for their actions under any circumstances at all is too much to ask in the current political climate.

If this definition passes, Norwegian rape law will be brought up to the level of the most flagrantly hateful rape laws in the world, such as the Sexual Offences Act of 2003 in the UK. English law went all the way ten years ago and defined rape as intentional penetration of a vagina without consent, and consent is defined as agreeing by choice with the freedom and capacity to make that choice. Violence or coercion does not enter into the definition at all. I have pointed out this trend before as well as the fact that courts tend to convict men according to this radical feminist definition throughout Europe regardless of the letter of the law. In Norway the courts have already routinely convicted men for "rape" without coercion for twelve years now, beyond what the law actually says, as the judges themselves admit. This legal reform is thus more a matter of harmonizing the letter of the law with practice and precedent, but it nonetheless represents a profound conceptual shift in what the feminist state considers to be rape, paving the way for a renewed deluge of accusations against men who will now have even less room to defend themselves.

I would encourage all Norwegians to watch this space for the statements of the interest groups. My regular readers probably know better, but I know a lot of men support NGOs like Amnesty and Save the Children. Do yourself a favor and read the statements from these organizations as they appear and decide if you really want to support such brazen hatred against yourself. I know there are no political parties we can vote for who don't support misandrist sex laws, but you don't need to fund the lobbying for these laws by the odious scumbags in Amnesty and the like also, now do you?

Is there anything non Norwegian MRA's or MRA sympathizers can do, Elvind? I do know that this stuff happens due to instituational incentives (which can be changed politically) and insiders(which many feminists have spent years to become and is a much harder issue to solve).

I'd always been suspicious of Amnesty. Indeed if you google their page on human rights violations in the Congo, you will find no reference to male-on-male rape there. It's "women as victims", period. Amnesty is yet another organisation growing fat on donations.

"All the other feminist shenanigans pale in comparison because criminalization represents direct, institutionalized violence against men."

In my opinion it also represents rape, or at least attempted rape, under the historical and sensible pre-feminist definitions of rape.

The war on male sexuality, is in my opinion, an attempt to rig the sexual market in a more favourable manner to the feminists who are making these laws. They are creating and using these laws to serve as threats of violence, imprisonment, and actual physical rape by other inmates (in effect, the proxies of feminists) to those men who seek alternative sexual outlets to relationships with the feminist demographic (the majority of women).

Clarence, I don't think there is much any of us can do at this point. The sex laws will continue to escalate until we reach a critical mass of men who oppose them, and so far the opposition isn't even noticeable as far as the politicians are concerned. If any of them have any objections to any of these laws the government is proposing now, then I bet it will be to claim they don't go far enough in punishing men and protecting women...

Next election, I won't even bother to vote, because Norwegian politics is just one big contest about who can be the biggest misandrist. Typically the left comes up with ever more hateful laws and then the right makes sure the police is provided with enough resources to enforce them; they are all equally bad.

Men ought to figure out ways to contribute negatively to this society and so far I am at least doing my part by not being a net taxpayer (and soon I will get money for wrongful and wasteful prosecution as well). I'd rather work just barely enough to survive, and such a strike would be a viable way to strangle the feminist state if enough men adopted it.

"This single, which involves a woman mocking the size of a man's penis, was also released in a toned down version replacing the word "dick" with "short" (the song was also released under the censored title "Short Short Man").[1] Co-writer Manfred Mohr told the Los Angeles Times that the point of the song was to attract attention. "We figured there were all these songs by men bashing women and treating women like sex objects. So we decided a song that turned the tables on men might attract some attention."[2] According to the vocalist Sandra Gillette, the point of the song is to "strike back at all the women-bashing songs in pop, especially in rap." [2]"

Thanks for the reply.I just wanted to make sure; I hate leaving you in the lurch more considering what you've already been through.

I know how things are in the USA and , to a lesser extent, Canada and Britain. I rely on you for news of Norway as you know the political and social climate there in a way that I do not. Thus, I was thinking maybe there was something that could be done to help men there on these issues that cannot be directly done here in the USA. It's rather depressing, really.

However your personal strategy is a good one, I feel. If there's nothing a larger movement can do than an individual must do what he can.

"In 1999, sex with very drunk or unconscious women was defined in Norway as a relatively minor crime of sexual exploitation and punished by an average of 4 months in prison. Today the same phenomenon is called "rape" and the usual sentence is 4 years."

And if you woke up and found out that you'd been sodomized either by a man,or a woman with a 'foreign object' would you just shrug it off as no big deal? Or would you feel like you had been violated?

"Simple lack of consent does not make it rape and neither does a trivial threat."

And if a man,under these conditions,raped you you'd be ok with that would you?

If you had a daughter who was raped,under these conditions,you would be ok with that? Would you just say to her,'Geeze honey,stop crying.I understand that,in any other circumstance no means no,but this isn't one of those times.You weren't brutally violated,you just didn't realize that when you said no,you really meant yes.It wasn't rape because your life wasn't threatened,so stop crying and know that daddy loves you,he just doesn't respect you.'

I do not recognize violation by objects as sex and hence this cannot be rape under any circumstances. Other laws covering nonsexual assaults should apply. To me it is absurd to call it rape because rape entails sex and sex requires a penis. This does not necessarily mean it is "no big deal." I could never feel sexually violated by an object, but there can certainly be other kinds of pain and damage. Being sodomized by objects can easily be worse than rape, but there is no need to pretend everything is a sex crime in order to treat it as a serious crime.

As to actual sexual exploitation of truly unconscious people who had every reasonable expectation of being left alone, then I never said this was OK either, and I agree with the old law and level of punishment for this. It is just wrong to define it as rape and sentencing is excessive. More importantly, this definition is used as a free pass for drunk women to regret consensual sex and retroactively cry rape, since the legal definition of unconsciousness is far from reasonable and also includes the egregiously unfair double standard of invalidating women's consent because they are intoxicated while men are held responsible for "raping" despite being similarly intoxicated.

"And if a man,under these conditions [lack of consent or trivial threats],raped you you'd be ok with that would you?"

That is absurd and can't happen. There is by definition no way to be raped under those conditions, because then you can, as I would, simply chose to resist or suffer the trivial consequences of denying sex. Anyone who has sex as a result of trivial pressure is letting him have it, not being raped. By any reasonable definition, rape is being forced to have sex (or seriously threatened), not simply choosing sex in order to avoid some trivial consequence that the "rapist" may well be fully entitled to carry out.

And indeed, if I had a daughter, I wouldn't consider her raped either unless she was overpowered or threatened with serious violence.

I wonder if all the manginas who support the feminist definition of rape would still feel so if their wife had every opportunity to avoid sex but went along with it simply because she couldn't be bothered to escape or to avoid some trivial threat like starting a rumor about her. Would they consider this rape or cheating? And if a normal husband feels it is cheating, why should it be enough to convict men as rapists?

Eivind: It seems that what the 'Anon' above was describing could easily fall under existing laws against assault and battery. Adding a sexual component to what are already crimes, has the effect of criminalizing sexuality as well.

For example, what is commonly called 'rape' is actually the same as assault and battery; there is no reason to make it somehow morally worse because a sexual act was involved.

Yes, the crime of "rape" must be reserved for only the most severe levels of sexual coercion. It has been thus defined throughout history for good reason, and expanding the definition is very bad news for men. Humans instinctively know what real rape is, and all this feminist nonsense of expanding the definition only serves as an excuse to lock up more men. Not even the "victims" believe they have been raped, as feminists themselves admit. What used to be a heinous crime that was sure to traumatize you has been reduced to a mere technicality, really. So in Norway now we have an offense of "rape" so trivial that often neither the "victim" nor the "rapist" even realizes there is anything wrong, yet the mandatory sentence for the man is at least 3 years in prison and the usual shortest sentence is 4 years. And the definition will shortly be expanded even further.

This entire post is absolutely vile. You seem incapable of rational thought, or any degree of human empathy. Every person has the right to consent. As autonomous human beings we have the right to say yes or no, and if we are in a position where we are unable to provide consent then it is quite simple: we are not in a position to have sex. What if someone has been knocked out, is it okay to have sex with them them? To completely violate someone who's unable to stop you, because you want to?

"What if someone has been knocked out, is it okay to have sex with them them?"

No, as I said I agree with how this was already criminalized over a hundred years ago (it just isn't rape -- it's a lesser crime of sexual exploitation). But that's not what this proposed legal reform is about. This isn't about a position of being "unable to provide consent" -- which has been legally redefined as rape in Norway since 2000. This round of rape law reform is explicitly meant to criminalize men as rapists even when the woman is fully conscious, is not threatened and has the ability to resist and avoid sex if she wants to, at no risk of anything bad happening to her. It is about removing the aspect of coercion from the definition of rape altogether.

Gosh, what a vile group of self-serving misogynists (yes, that's exactly what you are, however you might try to deny it) the Men's Rights movement appears to be made up of. It reminds me why I, as a man, am proud to call myself a feminist.

Watch your steps dear man, or you'll be charged with sexual misconduct before you even knew what hit you. Choose your female friends with care, or your feminist idolization, might turn out your worst nightmare it the right type of woman choose to use the misconduct label against you!

Thank you for taking time to reply to my post on Friday,March 01,2013 9:54:00PM.

It's very easy to call you names,as others have done.But if they take time to read what you're saying,some of it does make sense.And I say that as a woman.

But,I can never agree that,just because a woman doesn't say no,and isn't threatened,that its ok to have sex with her.You may not want to call it rape,but it is still a crime.

I would also like to point out that there has been a partial evolution within feminism.We now have a group within a group.They're called feminazis,and it is they,more than your traditional feminist,who is behind much of the recent 'female' legislation in Europe and the US.

They do such things as the Zero Tolerance campaign,which we had here in the UK.It included posters that said,'All Men Are Potential Rapists.' Such posters were even up in my local library.Until that is,I took them down while telling the objecting woman who had put them up,that,not only are these type of things unhelpful to women,its also incredibly offensive to everyone,not just men.

I do not agree with how statutory rape laws are being abused.The laws were first introduced to protect young unwed girls who may end up pregnant and the man doesn't take responsibility.It then evolved to protect children,usually aged 13/12 and under,from sexual penetration from an adult.But now its being used to convict people who can be just 3 years older than the person they're having relations with.Like a 16yrold and a 13yr old,or a 15yr old and an 18yr old.Such males will then get put on the Sex Offenders Registry,which they can be on from 5 to 10yrs.

Regarding some of the things you said,"I do not recognize violation by objects as sex and hence this cannot be rape under any circumstances." Rape isn't sex,its a forceful seizure of something that isn't yours.Sex is consensual.Rape is an act of force,humiliation,degradation and power.

"More importantly, this definition is used as a free pass for drunk women to regret consensual sex and retroactively cry rape since the legal definition of unconsciousness is far from reasonable and also includes the egregiously unfair double standard of invalidating women's consent because they are intoxicated while men are held responsible for "raping" despite being similarly intoxicated."

Unfortunately,such women exist.And all who are found guilty of this should face time in prison.I have argued myself at the double standards of the second part of your comment.

"That is absurd and can't happen. There is by definition no way to be raped under those conditions, because then you can, as I would, simply chose to resist or suffer the trivial consequences of denying sex."

It is possible to be completely overpowered and held immobile during an assault.Is that not rape?

If all you have is your voice and you don't cry out,is that ok? Many women in such situations find they are frozen in fear and cannot cry out.

I see your trolls haven't gotten any better. Mostly flinging insults and such. I don't even know why you bothered to reply to that Kat Fry coward.And Lord only knows what they are saying to you in Norwegian. Don't let the bastards and bitches get you down.

” But,I can never agree that,just because a woman doesn't say no,and isn't threatened,that its ok to have sex with her.”

I don’t think it’s ok to have sex with a woman who appears negative to the whole thing, but doesn’t resist and you are doing nothing to scare her. But what is “not ok” and what should be illegal are two completely different things. We all know it’s not ok to stand people up on dates, but it’s not illegal. I also find it annoying when a beggar I already gave money is begging for more and more, and yells at me when I refuse. If someone is whining for sex, and proceeds to have sex with a woman who isn’t threatened or resisting, one is not a gentleman, but one is not a rapist either. The thing is, there is A LOT of behavior that falls between “perfect human being” and “crime”. If we outlawed everything anyone found unpleasant, how good do you think the world would be?

“Rape isn't sex,its a forceful seizure of something that isn't yours.Sex is consensual.”

Well, from the point of the victim, it was violence and degradation. But from the point of the rapist, it was sex he got by force. Rapist and victim do not see this from the same angle. But why would they? I can’t think of 2 people who are less capable of empathizing with each other.

I used to believe this myself. How could I not – it permeates everything, and everyone else believes it. But it doesn’t agree with science. It doesn’t even agree with what the rapists themselves are saying. Evolutionary psychology is a part of biology, and has been since the 19th century. It’s used to understand the evolved behavior of animals. Rape exists in other species, it isn’t some construct. In some animals it happens when the male animal can’t persuade females to mate with him by any other means. It seems rape has been a (rather costly, but still) method of reproduction in animals in the evolutionary past. Think on these things:

1.When more porn is available, rape rates tend to go down (sometimes stay the same).2.Young early 20s women (the most attractive type) is overrepresented in rape statistics, although they fight back the hardest.3.Prisons that allow conjugal visits have lower rape rates than those that do not.

That’s not to say that power is NEVER a factor (serial killers seem to be all about power), but an average rapist appears to be sexually motivated. He simply doesn’t care about the victim’s feelings and takes what he wants, just like a robber. Rape is a sexual robbery.

“It is possible to be completely overpowered and held immobile during an assault.Is that not rape?”

That would be rape, but this was not what he was arguing against. The person he was responding to said this: “And if a man,under these conditions [lack of consent or trivial threats],raped you you'd be ok with that would you?” You can’t get raped under these conditions. However, if the situation escalates into serious threats or physical force, then it can become a rape. However, as it is (lack of consent/trivial threats), it’s just not enough. It is rude behavior on the part of the guy, but it’s not a rape attempt.

Rape in nature comes down to two things,domination and trying to make sure a female has your babies.If you think all females are ok with the latter,watch a female mallard trying to escape a pack of males who have been 'left out' during mating season.You may also find this article interesting.http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11764-female-ducks-fight-back-against-raping-males.html

Rape for humans can also be about domination,but it is mainly about force,violence and humiliation.

"But from the point of the rapist, it was sex he got by force."

For many years now,there has been a distinction between the acts of sex and rape.Sex is a consensual act.Rape is when the victim hasn't consented,and the person forcing themselves on them knows they have not consented.

"...but an average rapist appears to be sexually motivated. He simply doesn’t care about the victim’s feelings and takes what he wants..."

What a load of rubbish!There are many places men can go to have sex with willing women.

If you look at serious studies on rape statistics,you'll find that its a small amount of men who are responsible for a large percentage of rapes.They are repeat offenders,and repeat offenders usually have a very low opinion of women.And it is that attitude which makes most cases of rape acts of force,humiliation and degradation..http://www.innovations.harvard.edu/cache/documents/1348/134841.pdf

"What a load of rubbish!There are many places men can go to have sex with willing women."

Hmm. Perhaps you could be so kind as to inform of us of these 'many places', esp for a poor man?I'm in the USA. Prostitution is ILLEGAL here (even if I could always afford it)in Maryland. It's legal to my knowledge, ONLY in parts of the state of Nevadah(maybe there's someplace else I'm forgetting, but I know there can't be more than one other place in the whole country).

So go on: tell us just where men who have no confidence or luck (or just have lost the genetic lottery to the point where they are hideously ugly, or very handicapped or old) can go to "easily" and legally have sex with willing women, esp if they are poor and can't afford to go to Nevada.

Seriously, such stupidity makes me take the rest of your argument against Emma much less seriously.

And the study you cite has its own detractors:http://changefromwithin.org/2013/01/30/rethinking-sexual-violence-rethinking-lisak-miller/

Of course these are "rape culture" feminists doing the critiquing, and they've expanded the definition of rape and partly used that expanded definition to attack the Lisak study, which, at least, comports to what most people think of as rape.

I don't think there lots of good studies on rape. Take Lisak at face value, but he didn't ask the repeat rapists WHY they did what they did. Pretty much no one ever does. I've only found a few books that tried to deal with the motivations of rapists by ASKING them:

I wasn't talking about prostitution.I'm from the UK and was unaware of US law on this subject.

"Of course these are "rape culture" feminists doing the critiquing, and they've expanded the definition of rape and partly used that expanded definition to attack the Lisak study, which, at least, comports to what most people think of as rape."

Yes,those are the feminazis I mentioned.These women are moronic and vindictive.Most feminists do not agree with their points of view.

"I don't think there lots of good studies on rape."

I agree.But from the books I've read about it,where the rapist has been asked why,the most common answer being because it feels good to have that kind of power and control over someone.They also enjoy the thrill of resistance.As part of the introduction of The Rapist File says,"And yet as soon as the object of rape stopped resisting,the pleasure faded....In contrast to many judges,doctors and law enforcement officials,few rapists believe that women want to be raped.They know the truth because,as they state,they would not enjoy rape if women did."

"Take Lisak at face value, but he didn't ask the repeat rapists WHY they did what they did."

No, I do not. Why do you jump to that conclusion? Rape is called rape precisely because it's forced sex, not consensual sex. It is in other animals, as it is in humans.

"For many years now,there has been a distinction between the acts of sex and rape.Sex is a consensual act.Rape is when the victim hasn't consented,and the person forcing themselves on them knows they have not consented."

Yes. None of which contradicts anything I said. In fact, you and I disagree with the current definition of rape in Norway. Here, the guy doesn't have to know he is raping! That is, he doesn't have to threaten, use force or violence, and still be convicted for negligent rape, because he "should have known" she didn't want the sex, and he failed to read her mind.

"There are many places men can go to have sex with willing women."

Yet studies seem to show most rapists to be of low status (which for men is a big blow to attractiveness). However, yes, there are men who are otherwise attractive, who also rape, This doesn't prove it's about power, though. Never heard of rich kids getting caught for stealing?

"If you look at serious studies on rape statistics,you'll find that its a small amount of men who are responsible for a large percentage of rapes.They are repeat offenders,and repeat offenders usually have a very low opinion of women.And it is that attitude which makes most cases of rape acts of force,humiliation and degradation"

Hmm, that reminds me of something. There are men out there, called PUAs, who are responsible for a large percentage of sex partners, who often have low opinion on women. Does it mean their sexual adventures are about force, humiliation and degradation, and not sex? Or are they rather opportunistic users, who don't care about the needs of their partners?

What kind of books have you read? What you are saying seems completely the opposite of what I read. I did read some studies on rape motivations. Most rapist quotes say something like "She looked hot and I raped her when nobody was looking"...Yet the conclusion of the study was something like "it's about socialization that leads men to disrespect women".

In the same study, they provide you with quotes (majority of which insist it was about sex), yet they conclude it's about disrespect/degradation! I'm used to this happening in studies, and this is why I read them carefully (methods and data), rather than just skip to the conclusion. And unsurprisingly, introductions of such studies are often quite obviously biased in the direction of feminist theory.

I'm just saying that even when the researcher starts dividing rapists into power rapists, sadism rapists and other, most of them are likely to be sex-motivated. You have to look at what they say and see for yourself.

If so, why do we need to expand the definition of rape to include sex explicitly devoid of all those things? Do you see the inherent contradictions in saying that while supporting legislation which seeks to remove all force or coercion from the definition? Surely we can define rape in terms of force if it IS an act of force and power?

Or maybe you don't really believe your own feminist propaganda? Rape is indeed about sex for most rapists. The power myth is one of the most offensive (because it represents a rhetorical castration of men and denies large parts of the male sex drive) and unfortunately successfully indoctrinated claims of feminism. Saying rape is about power or violence and not sex is a feminist lie that makes as much sense as saying prostitution is motivated by a desire to give money to women, or robbing banks is about guns and violence and not related to a desire for financial gain. We are to belive men are incapable of wanting sex as soon as a woman says no. For most things, conventional psychology says we want something more when it becomes scarce and we can't have it, and yet we are supposed to believe all men turn asexual as soon as they encounter any resistance from a woman, and from that point on are only preoccupied with power (yet somehow they still show the physical signs of arousal, so their erections must metaphysically somehow be detached from their sex drive). It is mind-bogglingly absurd, but has been repeated so many times that most people believe it. I recall believing that rape is about power myself after hearing it on the radio when I was about 6 years old. But later I learned the truth, not least because I know from my own motivation that sex is what I want from women, and any violence would merely be instrumental to get it. Evolutionary psychology also bears this out.

Rape is about sex, but this does not mean all sex is rape. So what if some women have trouble saying no in some benign situations? Expanding the definition of rape to catch all of these is like criminalizing all beggars as robbers because some people have trouble saying no to them. Would it fly to say some people are "frozen in fear and cannot cry out" if they meet a beggar, so the definition of robbery needs to be expanded to catch these? That would never pass, but somehow rape is exempt from any normal principles of justice. Men are so utterly worthless that it is acceptable to criminalize us, and to criminalize us as rapists, for any kind of sexual situation that women come to regret in any way whatsoever. We already have negligent rape in Norway, so men don't need to know they are "raping" in order to be convicted. Is that about power rather than sex too, subconsciously perhaps? Most accused rapists are not "repeat offenders" but ordinary men who have had sex with drunk women who later regret it. And the law is now explicitly designed to accommodate them. False rape is institutionalized, so these accusers can never be charged for making false accusations as you suggest. False rape is the law! And men need to fight this corruption of justice.

"...and yet we are supposed to believe all men turn asexual as soon as they encounter any resistance from a woman, and from that point on are only preoccupied with power (yet somehow they still show the physical signs of arousal, so their erections must metaphysically somehow be detached from their sex drive)."

That's the kind of answer and straight out economical use of effective words and argument that only an MRA of Eivind's calibre could retort with.If all men could think like that, there wouldn't be such a thing as feminism, nor the gutless manginas that blindly support it.

Whenever I hear these hazy questions of 'what constitutes consent', I'm tempted to suspect that we're talking about people whose sexual experience really only exists in their own imaginations. Unlike the exploitation you describe, which really has no long-lasting trauma associated with it---how could an unconscious person even know that it happened? If it happened to me, I'd assume the whole thing was a dream.

Obviously these laws (like the proposed Norwegian one) come from people who likely have little or no actual sexual experience.

"I don't think it is at all absurd. Brings to mind the old adage - "long stick don't poke my eye, it is from afar we tell it". For the uninitiated that means simply that a stitch in time saves nine.

It is always best to avert trouble than to wait for it to arrive"

Kinda makes you think about that Tom Cruise movie Minority Report, and "precogs" detecting criminals before the crime happens.. That was a movie firmly in the dystopian tradition - but those only work as long as the concept is remotely realistic (i.e. rooted in actual human traits). As it's been said: We have nothing to fear but fear itself. (A literary, intellectual and motivational statement that is designed to make one think, not to be taken strictly verbatim.. )

People are taught that everyone is a pervert and law enforcement in this country encourages turning people in for suspected crimes. Once you're accused, even if clearly falsely, it's a lot of money and pain until you clear your name. Until we stop this culture of fear about kids and perverts we will continue to have Orwellian policies about turning people in for suspected sex crimes. Get used to it. Or get used to fight the feminazi fuled abuse industry.

With that and the child porn nonsense, it would be more honest to simply ban all pornography (and perhaps all images of women and children altogether). The proposed EU law is thus good news for the MRM. That way there will be no more pretense that law enforcement is only targeting "perverts" of one kind or another, but rather male sexuality itself. When all porn is banned, the average man will feel personally criminalized and hopefully be turned against feminism.

"Requiring sex offenders to undergo penile plethysmography casts the government in the role of child pornographer, provocateur, and voyeur. These roles are morally wrong when assumed by ordinary citizens; they do not cease to be so simply because they are assumed by the government and its agents."

"Most likely, the person reading this won't ever be charged in a sexual assault/child molestation case, as prosecutors cannot charge everyone. If you are falsely accused, however, there are a number of things that you should do -- and not do. I will deal with those things in this post.

After you get over the first wave of shock and anger of being falsely accused, you probably just are confused and want this nightmare to go away. You have to understand, however, that the police and the local prosecutors really are not interested in whether or not you actually did the things of which you are accused. That's right; they are not interested. They already have decided you are guilty, and their mission is to spin everything that they find into a way to get you thrown into prison for the rest of your life.

It does not matter if the accusations are a lie. Cops and prosecutors lie all the time and the honest people in that business often are intimidated and threatened by the bad guys. You are going to be dealing with people who don't care if you are innocent or guilty; they already have decided you are guilty, and they don't like to be confused with facts."

Here's an example of a male feminist going off the rails (probably thinking that he'll get pussy from female readers for being so considerate towards their gender): http://upworthy.com/cnn-pays-touching-tribute-to-the-rapists-who-attacked-a-16-year-old-girl?c=o98

What is antifeminism? If you look at the most liked definition on urban dictionary, there should not come to anyones surprise that antifeminism is frowned upon.

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=antifeminist

A rational definition of antifeminism is, an ideology that oppose feminism.

Feminists might claim that if you oppose feminism, than you oppose for instance womens right to vote etc. That is totally ridiculous of course. Women gained the right to vote in 1920. How many of those who call themselves feminists today where even born in he 1920s? Still they take credit for it, since they call themselves feminists.

That is like taking credit for working class privileges gained by the labour movement, because you call yourself a communist. And denying people the right to be an antifeminist, is the same as denying people the right to oppose communism.

I've read through the posts on this thread, and quite frankly am rather worried for the future of men. While the womens rights-movement was about the right to an education, the right to take up work outside the home and the right to decide over her own body, the men's rights movement seems to be about the right to have sex. If that is the case ... are you guys kidding?

No-one can force another human being to have sex with them, and no: sex is by no means a right that you can claim. Insisting that women are falsely in propriety of sexual interaction because all men want sex all the time and women are the ones who decides which men that will "get some" is beyond reason.

But even if it were true, even if men are so totally controlled by their lizard-brain that to be denied sex is paramount to abuse against men; do you really propose that women must succumb to such a state by offering sex whenever a man wants it?

You can not bully a woman into having sex with you, nor whine your way into a woman's bed. And no, you're not allowed to drug her og get her drunk in order to penetrate her. Concent is easy: if she says yes, she wants to have sex with you. If she is forced or co-herced or dead drunk or drugged, you don't have concent. And frankly, if you have an erection, be a grown man ans deal with it - don't make it someone elses responsibility.

Eivind: You advocate that the legal age for sexual intercourse should be lowered to 12 years. Are you mad? Have you seen a twelve year old girl? Do you know any twelve year old girls? I ask, but I dread the answer ... A twelve year old, boy or girl, is still a child. I don't care if you see a sexual being (which would be intensely gross) - twelve year olds are still kids! They play with lego, with dolls and watch cartoons. They have the bodies of children and they see the world through the eyes of children.

But perhaps that is the answer to your unsavoury "movement" - to allow grown men to abuse children, so that men who otherwise can't get sex can, by law, prey on kids who are unable to understand what the "nice man" actually wants until it's too late.

It would be easier to take the MRM seriously if you came across as grown men who would take onboard serious issues. But seriously: Men who are not getting laid is hardly a world-problem. It may seem so to a man who conciders sex a birthright, but wake up, guys: Sex is not something that you're entitled to. And your idea that you are is no womans problem.

Barbiegirl:While Eivind can give you his own answer, I will give you mine:

Please crawl away into a deep, dark, hole and die.

Not everyone here agrees with everything Eivind says.

And if you are so stupid as to:A. Forget that while sex isn't a right ridiculous overbroad sexual laws impact men and boys, women and girls and impact men and boys more than the women. Sex, like eating is a normal biological function, it is part of intimacy that many people crave and laws dealing with it need to be rational and nuanced not based on male hate and hysteria. If you can't see that some of the child porn laws for instance (Fucking DRAWINGS for chrissake? ) are insane, than YOU are insane.B. Imagine this is the "big" MRA site when there are places like A Voice for Men, and they hardly agree with Eivind on some things

then you are really too stupid to talk here to men or about men and as far as I am concerned you can take your stupid, trolling ass back to Jezebel or whatever feminist hellhole you crawled out of in the first place.

Really, Eivind has been through a heck of a lot. You managed to upset me a bit with your stupidity, I don't think a cunt like you is even worth Eivinds time, but that's his decision to make.

First, no one here actually suggests sex should become a right. That is, at best, a misunderstanding, and at worst, a lie from the Reform report. What you must have heard is the argument that if feminists insist on forcing equality everywhere where it serves women (economically, and in the highest power positions), then why not force equality where it serves men, too? In men’s case, that would be make sure they have as much sexual power as women have. The thing is, forcing both of these things is insane. However, taking the logic to its correct conclusion shows people how feminist logic would be, if it was consistent. Equality is equality, it can’t go halfway!

Second, this is not about a “right” to have sex. What we here want for men, is the right to pursue sex and have sex with willing people, without

1)Being convicted for rape without evidence, just based on credibility of the accuser.

2)Being convicted for rape even if the accused didn’t know he was raping, and the situation would look like ordinary sex to any reasonable outsider (i.e. the accuser felt raped, but was not)

3)Being convicted for rape for trivial things like threatening to end a relationship if they refuse sex.

4)Being convicted for rape because the accuser used any of the above as a cover for lying.

5)Being fined, when you try to pay someone for sex.

6)Being convicted for rape because the accuser forgot what she was doing while intoixcated (not unconscious, lying on the ground; forgot).

But all of these are possible. While they don’t happen to the majority of men, they are like Russian roulette, and you feel happy until it actually happens to you. Almost like rape, except done by the state. How’d you feel if state picked a few women once in a while, to do the same with? Or even men you know and love.

You can argue that all of those things can help convict even more actual rapists, like those who actually raped, but there was no evidence. But while it can hypothetically protect more women, it also opens for a lot more abuse, a loophole anyone can use to ruin a man. It's just that the lawmakers want to give more accusers "justice", at the cost of men. How can anyone feel safe after that?

Barbie, where do you get you ideas from? What MRM advocates is the right to have consensual sex without feminists and the state stopping them with an increasing number of harsh laws, which is quite different from claiming the right to take it!

12 year old girls playing with lego? Retarded twelve year olds, you mean? 12 years is the median age for the menarche. It's when most girls are ready to have babies. Calling fertile girls children makes no sense. I remember well when I was twelve years and obsessed with sex. I really wish I would have had a girlfriend at that time.

It seems like you haven't thought much about what legal age really is. It's not a recommendation to have sex. It's when you absolutely need to use the most severe means a democracy has to punish men for doing something two people want. Younger girls may be more prone to being exploited than older ones, and for many it might not be in their best interests to start that early. But that doesn't mean we should jump at the opportunity to put more men in jail, just because it's possible. The fact is most 12 year old girls will choose not to have sex regardless of the laws, and those laws mainly serve to demonize and hurt men, as well as traumatize young girls in court.

A few decades ago things were just fine - as long as the girl was physically mature she could have sex, and noone cared, even if technically it broke a law. Young girls not having sex should be up to parents and society, not an increasing number of harsh laws that create actual victims.

Close, but not quite. While the MRM has a PUA branch which is all about getting laid, that is by noncoercive means and we do not advocate an absolute right to have sex (at least not aside from a rhetorical device against equally foolish feminist entitlements). The Men's Rights Movement is about fighting the injustice which happens when we do have sex, thanks to feminist sex law reforms. Most crucially the corruption of rape law and also the madness of age of consent laws, yes.

A 12-year-old girl is not the naive child you pretend she is. She is at least pubescent and may well have reached menarche. It is utterly unconscionable to condone an age of consent higher than 12 or 13 at most, especially when we pretend all sex below this age is "rape" or "abuse" even when it blatantly isn't and the punishment is absurdly draconian. Evolution did not make fertile females who are naive about sex and the fact that men want to fuck them. Indeed, young teenage girls are designed to be most careful about their sexual choices because they have the most to lose, being at the height of their attractiveness. It would be absurd for females to be naive about how to manage their sexual assets when they are most in demand, and in the real world they are perfectly capable of deciding if and when to have sex. A law pretending otherwise is pure misandry and of course the MRM must fight it.

"Indeed, young teenage girls are designed to be most careful about their sexual choices because they have the most to lose, being at the height of their attractiveness."

I totally disagree. 13 year old girls are not at the peak of their attractiveness. Young women in their 20s or late teens are. Have you ever taken a thorough look at a 12 or 13 year old? Skinny, undeveloped bodies, you might as well be coming on to an anorectic... It is an absurd argument. They are not careful about their sexual choices either. Often they are so insecure that they take a courting feedback from an older guy as a huge compliment.

I agree 13-year-old girls, because they tend to be skinny, may not be at the peak of their attractiveness compared to older teens or even women in their early 20s sometimes, but they are very close and the point is it would be remarkable if nature hadn't equipped them with careful sexual choosiness when they are so desirable and fertile. And indeed in the real world it is harder to sleep with teenage girls than, say, 40-year-old women. I know this from personal experience -- it is much easier to get sex from older women than supposedly "insecure" teenagers. The "insecurity" nonsense is feminist propaganda for gullible fools, and reality flies in the face of this lie when you actually try to have sex with teenage girls. They know their value and exhibit extreme choosiness.

The anthropological evidence shows a woman's attractiveness is at its maximum just after she reaches puberty. I can cite studies to back this up. Whether surveying men now would yield a slightly different result (perhaps influenced by feminist propaganda) is beside the point. I meant something like 13-25 is the general peak, and this is when women are expected to be the most picky, and certainly able to make informed mate choices. Claims to the effect that 13-year-old girls are naive and easily taken advantage of by older men do not correspond with reality for very strong evolutionary reasons.

It is beyond question that current age of consent laws include several years when girls are perfectly able to make informed mate choices. So if we cut through the feminist propaganda, what is the real explanation for these illogical and hateful laws? Evolutionary psychologists speculate that these laws developed as a way for parents to control their daughters' sexuality by getting them past the age when they are most likely to form strong romantic attachments on their own (this ability is diminished later), so as to having a better chance of controlling their eventual marriage. Now this point is largely moot as parents have little influence over marriages anymore but the age of consent laws have a life of their own as pure feminist hatred against men and bizarrely, they even include boys. And then the propaganda is updated to concoct a pseudoscientific explanation for why boys also need them and the result is the female sex offender charade on top of all the other insanity.

All science, law, even social science, strive to have WELL DEFINED terminology.

Call it "illicit sex with an adolescent minor", or "sex with a drunk woman", "sex without written and enthusiastic consent". But not "rape". It does the victims of real true forcible rape-rape a disservice.

@Barbiegirl If someone favors IMPUNITY for sex with 12 year olds, then it means that government should not be concerned about CONSENSUAL sex of 12 year olds who are not well guarded by their parents or whose parents consent to the relationship.

It does not mean that he wants to FORCE your daughter to have sex at age 12. Most likely she herself will not want, will not agree.

You use one of the feminist manipulation tactics, confusion, false conclusions .......

@Barbiegirl said

You advocate that the legal age for sexual intercourse should be lowered to 12 years. Are you mad? Have you seen a twelve year old girl? Do you know any twelve year old girls? I ask, but I dread the answer ... A twelve year old, boy or girl, is still a child. I don't care if you see a sexual being (which would be intensely gross) - twelve year olds are still kids! They play with lego, with dolls and watch cartoons. They have the bodies of children and they see the world through the eyes of children.

I would go as far as to say that age of consent laws are (almost) unnecessary.

Teenage sex in liberal countries with good sex education has no serious consequences for the woman/girl.

Sex does have serious consequences for the man/boy.

He will be abused by the legal system, by the prison system, raped by fellow prisoners, his life destroyed. And if none of this happens, he has no choice regarding pregnancy and forced labor child support.

He can not abort, can not give the child in adoption, no safe haven laws. Only obligation to pay with no enforceable right to even see the child.

Eivind, I would love to discuss evolutionary science. I know a lot about it.

You sayEvolution did not make fertile females who are naive about sex and the fact that men want to fuck them. Indeed, young teenage girls are designed to be most careful about their sexual choices because they have the most to lose, being at the height of their attractiveness. It would be absurd for females to be naive about how to manage their sexual assets when they are most in demand, and in the real world they are perfectly capable of deciding if and when to have sex. A law pretending otherwise is pure misandry and of course the MRM must fight it.

Good points. I wish evolutionary psychologists could get grants to test and prove such statements. Of course, this will not happen.

Otherwise, without testing, this is called "just-so" stories. Even if they are almost self-evident.

You will disagree on the second point (we can drop it as soon as child porn gets de-criminalized, especially those depictions that clearly have no victims)

But the first part is clear: women's lies and fraud hurt innocent men and this really deserves punishment.

Or, again, stop forcing men to fork over alimony and child support is the real problem. If men can not be forced, just like women are not forced, the woman will have to bear the consequences of her own reproductive behavior

"That doesn't make me think that a relationship between a man and a child is more of a good idea. Nor to stigmatize sexually abused boys by the claim that they are 'lucky'"

But sexually "abused" boys (by women) *are* lucky. This is simply an honest assessment of the facts. When they themselves feel lucky, they are the envy of their peers and older men alike, and everything we know about biology and anthropology tells us they are lucky, then no amount of fraudulent definitions by feminists or the law can make them abused. The emperor has no clothes -- the female sex offender charade is a lie promulgated by hateful feminists and believed by gullible fools. Some of us see through the charade and are not afraid to proclaim it in no uncertain terms that these boys are lucky! "Abused" (by consensual sex) underage girls are also not victims, but they have objectively had something valuable taken from them and had their SMV lowered somewhat, unlike boys, so they aren't lucky. None of this deserves to be criminalized, but it is profoundly more unjust and bizarre to pretend lucky boys are victims too and nice women are sex offenders. Nothing pisses me off as profoundly as the female sex offender charade, because it is so perversely wrong and offensive at so many levels. It goes beyond a simple miscarriage of justice -- which is what the criminalization of male sexuality is -- because the "abused" boys are spectacularly the diametrically opposite of victims.

@ Human Stupidity

I agree that age of consent laws are more or less unnecessary, since sex is by no means mandatory just because it is legal. And to the extent that they should be kept, they should only apply to prepubescent children and not make it worse than it is by pretending there is "rape" or "abuse" when in fact there isn't. Call it something like "illicit sex" which makes no unfounded claims about reality, if it must be criminalized. It is difficult to argue that there should be an age of consent at all though when the main problem with consensual child sex seems to be problematization itself. This view is too radical for most people to even contemplate though, so as a practical matter I think it is best to advocate lowering the age of consent to 12 or 13.

I will try to make time to comment on your site in the future. It is one of the few good ones left these days as the MRM is awash in manginas.

Agree that MRAs should consider fighting back on equal terms, as long as we understand the meaning of equal terms. Equal terms does not mean supporting the female sex offender charade, because the equivalent to male rape is not female sexual coercion or "abuse" of boys like the dense manginas at sites like AVfM imagine but, as you point out, paternity fraud. Calling paternity fraud aggravated bank robbery would indeed be analogous to corruption of rape law.

If anyone thinks Eivind's opinion on psyciatric torture is too extreme, think what you'd do if you were instead a prisoner of war and that stuff (chemicals and restraints for days and days) was done to you. Or perhaps you were the main hero in 1984 and they were trying to convince you to see 5 fingers where there are only 4. If you didn't think that guy deserved to die in that scene, you're a politically correct wussy, a sheep, probably wouldn't mind calmly standing there as you're lined up for the slaughter as long as the butcher speaks in a pleasant voice and promises to help you.

You said something earlier I'd like you to explain: That your definition of sex requires penile penetration. My problem is the following – if you operate with a biological definition of sex as actions that may lead to procreation, the penis need to be inserted into a vagina. After all, the penis cannot procreate anything on its own. So, if sex is defined as penetration which in typical cases leads to procreation, it follows that two men can not have sex together (which certainly comes as a surprise to me). Or maybe your definition of sex is not biological ... could you explain? Billy Boy

Emma: Is there any cases of men being convicted of rape for "trivial things like threatening to end a relationship if they refuse sex"?. I would be interested to know if you could show me a case?Billy B.

Yes, sex requires penile penetration. I never said it had to be necessarily potentially procreative though. Gay sex is close enough that one might reasonably call it sex, colloquially at least. Lesbians, on the other hand, are incapable of having sex with each other. Which is why lesbian porn is always classified as softcore. It is hardly controversial to exclude oral sex from sex; even Clinton famously did that, as is consistent with common usage among normal Americans in my experience. I also exclude any kind of objects and I think most people realize that one cannot copulate with inanimate objects, since that would be masturbation at best.

As to trivial rape convictions, I cannot recall a case specifically based on threatening to end a relationship, but there are plenty of absurdly trivial cases resulting in conviction, such as the one discussed directly above your comment. The official rape law propaganda promulgated by the government also makes it abundantly clear that the courts are supposed to convict any kind of threats leading to sex as rape, no matter how trivial and even if the threat is legal and even honorable. Examples they use of legal threats are threatening to start a rumor about a woman, and an "honorable" one can be, according to the propaganda, to threaten to report a woman for a crime she actually committed, in order to obtain sex. All of this is rape under current Norwegian law. Yet this is not enough, and now they want to expand the definition further so that the man does not even have to threaten in any way whatsoever, or use any kind of force. Then the simple fact that the sex (and they use that term much more loosely than I do) is unwanted makes it rape. And as has already been the case for 12 years now since the criminalization of negligent rape, the man doesn't even have to realize he is "raping." The future definition will thus exclusively refer to how a woman feels about sex after the fact.

The exact definition of sex doesn't matter much in everyday speech, but it is highly significant in the context of feminist-inspired legislative creep because dishonestly expanding the definition of words like "sex" and "intercourse" is one way they achieve escalating sentencing and demonization of men. By calling it sex, they manage to define acts like rubbing a penis against a woman's stomach (this is an exact example from the propaganda I cited above) as "rape" and to sentence men to far more time in prison than they could have without such corruption of language. A simple deceitful linguistic trick makes a difference of many years in prison because rape is defined by "seksuell omgang" (sex) versus the much less serious "seksuell handling" (sexual act), and expanding the definition of "samleie" (intercourse) opens up even more possibilities of longer sentencing. The most egregious example is how these feminist scumbags in our legislature define "intercourse" in the context of sex with minors, and how they now propose to expand this already absurd concept further in order to escalate sentencing of men even more. These definitions matter because they translate into real violence against men, and we therefore should not let the feminists get away with corrupting language like that.

The only law which still retains some sanity in the definition of sex is sibling incest. This law is at least nominally restricted to intercourse, for now. This is something of an anachronism in today's hateful climate and I expect a reform here as soon as the pigs fail to prosecute a case because it wasn't intercourse.

Some want to go even further than that. Some politicians have suggested that the law should read without enthusiastic consent, meaning that if a woman have willing sex wit someone without really wanting the sex herself it is rape. The way that would literary work is that if my hubby want sex but I am not really that into that right then and there and would rather just read a book but I decide that since he want it so much, why not let us have a roll in the hey, that is to be considered rape since I was not enthusiastic about it, this is insane and as a woman I am insulted. These insane rape laws say that I can not be responsible for my own body, that I need the law to tell me when and how to have sex and that is just wrong.Be Well

Why does sex require penile penetration but no vagina? I really cannot see on what ground you base your definition of sex? There is something utterly weird about claiming that women "are the gatekeepers" or "have possession of" sex while denying that women can have sex with each other. How can women be in possession of "sex" while at the same time two women giving each other orgasms do not have sex? I just do not understand where you take your criteria from? It seems to be neither common usage nor reproductive biology, but simply a claim that the penis is the only sexual organ, without really basing it on anything other than, well... I donno... what?

Sex requires both a penis and a vagina in its strictest sense. I am willing to allow for a somewhat wider definition to include things like anal sex, but at some point it gets ridiculous and dangerous to expand the definition. Do you realize that in Norway, you don't even have to touch a woman in order to be convicted of "rape"? It is enough to talk her into masturbating, since masturbation is defined as sex ("seksuell omgang") in the law. We already have an example of a rape conviction from talking women into masturbating via webcam (the so-called helicopter doctor case), and in fact he got prevetative detention which is an open-ended, potential life sentence. Do you see where it leads to allow the scumbag feminists in our legislatures to define "sex" however they want? Such corruption of language is a powerful shortcut to escalate their war on male sexuality, since by piggybacking on the existing revulsion to rape in the populace, all they have to do is quietly expand the definitions involved and they can imprison far more men for much longer. This is an issue of not mere semantics but real state violence against men, or I wouldn't be so concerned with definitions. I don't really care how you define sex in everyday speech, but in real life people don't actually use these feminist definitions either. I never heard a man boast he had sex with a woman after seing her masturbate on camera, for example; it is entirely artificial. These absurd definitions only exist in order to bring down more state violence on men, and men who accept these definitions are useful idiots for the feminists.

How do you propose to fight feminist rape law without focusing on rape and its legal definition? Feminist obsession with rape has led to numerous reforms which have been tremendously empowering for women and detrimental to men. Feminists talk so much about rape because it works. By tapping into the natural revulsion of both sexes to real rape, feminists have accomplished a legal reign of terror against men after fudging the definition of rape. Obviously, men need to focus on (false) rape as much as the feminists do in order to fight all these legal reforms. At least I don't see any way around it.

Abstract: A recent proposal by the Norwegian government aims to criminalize speech that under the principle of nulla poena sine lege has been forbidden only in "traditional" public spheres; not on the Internet. This note points out principled challenges posed by criminalizing speech in general and practical challenges by this proposal in particular. Criminalized speech is low priority crime, and rarely prosecuted. There is little reason to believe the proposed amendment will fare better in discouraging unwanted speech; what it may do, however, is add to the number of unenforced prohibitions threatening to weaken popular respect for the legal system.